


First Term at the Peninsular School

by Skud



Category: Sharpe
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Boarding School, Gen, School
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-04
Updated: 2006-04-04
Packaged: 2017-10-02 06:49:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skud/pseuds/Skud
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Richard Sharpe's first term at the Peninsular School.  Will he make friends with the other boys?  Will there be japes and pranks and midnight feasts?  And, most importantly, who will he fag for?</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Term at the Peninsular School

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the aos_flashfic "genre" challenge. Just a few hundred words of boarding school AU.

Richard Sharpe stood uncertainly on the station platform. Crowds of boys in the green blazer and silver buttons of the Peninsular School swarmed around him, shouting and calling to each other.

"Cooper! How were your hols?"

"Glad to be back again, Harris?"

Parents were scattered amongst the boys, some of them trying to find porters while others wished their sons a fond farewell. Richard had no parents, having grown up in an orphanage in Yorkshire; when he had been given a charity place at the school, the orphanage Matron, who was not unkind, had seen him off at the train station in York.

"You'll change trains in London," she had said, "But don't worry; the headmaster writes to tell me that one of the prefects will meet you there."

Richard looked around him, wondering which boys were the prefects. Some of them were as tall as men. A group were standing nearby, roaring with laughter at something. One of them turned around and saw Richard watching them. He broke away from the group and came over.

"I say, you're a new boy."

"Aye," replied Richard.

"You're not --" the boy pulled a piece of crumpled paper from his pocket -- "Sharpe, are you?"

"Aye," said Richard again, feeling tongue-tied.

"Oh, jolly good! I'm Wellington." He stuck out his hand, and Richard shook it. "You're in my house: Talavera, the best house in the school. I suppose I'd better see you onto the train."

Wellington led the way onto the carriage and knocked on the door of one of the compartments before opening it. "Hagman," he said to one of the occupants, "This is Sharpe. He's a new boy. Keep an eye on him, would you?"

With that he stepped aside and let Sharpe enter the compartment. Three boys were sitting there. One of them moved a violin case off the seat to let him sit down. "I'm Dan Hagman," he said, "and this is Harris, and that's Perkins."

Hagman was a long-faced boy with lank hair and a broad country accent. Sharpe liked him immediately. Harris had curling red hair sticking out from his school cap and wore spectacles. Perkins was a very small boy, far younger than the other two, but he grinned cheerfully at Sharpe as he sat down.

"Wine gum?" he asked, offering a sticky packet.

"Thanks," said Sharpe, taking one of the offered sweets and sucking on it.

"Do you know what form you're in yet?" asked Harris. Sharpe shook his head. "I expect they'll examine you tomorrow. How's your French?"

Sharpe stared at him. "I don't speak French."

"Oh." Harris looked nonplussed. "Well, they'll start you on that quickly enough. And Latin, and mathematics, and history."

Sharpe felt a knot growing in his stomach. He knew none of these things; he'd been lucky enough to learn to read and write at the orphanage, and right now he wished he was back there.

"Well," said Harris cheerfully, "I expect sports are more your thing."

Richard nodded dumbly, but knew that whatever sport they played at the Peninsular School would probably be just as foreign to him as French.

* * *

The first evening at tea-time, Richard met some of the other boys in his house. Hagman had stuck to him most of the afternoon, showing him where to put his trunk and explaining the school's customs in a good-humoured way.

A bell rang, and Hagman smiled. "Tea-time! I'm famished. Come on." He led the way to the refectory, where about a hundred boys were gathered, jostling and shoving their way to the tables. Hagman guided him through the press of bodies to their table. "You can sit beside me," he said.

Wellington was already seated at the head of the table, and Perkins beside Hagman. Harris was at the next table, and the spaces in between were filled by other boys who, by the red stripe on their blazers, Richard could tell were also part of Talavera house.

"Cooper," called Hagman, "Come and meet the new boy." Richard found himself introduced to all the boys at his table, and hoped he would remember their names. "The next two tables are Talavera, too," Hagman explained. "That's Pat Harper over there. He's captain of the rugger team, and he'll be your dorm monitor."

He pointed at a boy who was just sitting down, and Richard's eyes opened wide. Harper was enormous, and towered head and shoulders over the other boys. He had dark features, and spoke with the burr of an Irish accent.

"Hey, Wellie!" shouted an older boy from a distant table, "Who's the new fag?"

"Stow your rot, Kiely," called out Wellington in return. "He's in my house, and you can't have him."

"What does he mean?" Richard asked Hagman.

Hagman explained as the food was brought out: bread-and-butter, and sausages, and toad-in-the-hole. "The lower forms fag for the upper forms -- brush their boots, bring them hot water, that sort of thing. But you don't have to fag for anyone in another house if you're already fagging for someone in your own house, see?"

"I'm to be a servant to him?" Richard asked, indicating Wellington.

"We all take turns," Hagman said. "Isn't that right, Perkins?"

Perkins nodded, his mouth full of food. Richard took some for himself and set to eating it, thinking hard about the situation. Dashed if he'd fag for Wellington or any other boy, prefect or not!


End file.
